Harnessing the Power of Visual Communication to Promote Creative Engagement and Response Amongst School Students

At a time when the world is increasingly moving beyond a text-based culture to one that is saturated in images it appears there is a growing need to consider students' visual education. The explosion in the use of visual media and technologies in our times has meant there is a greater need for training visually literate individuals who are capable of critical visual analysis. The use of visual media in learning and teaching is supported by research demonstrating that learner preferences and styles might be more effectively addressed, and that enhanced learning and retention can take place through the use of visual material. This paper explores strategies for encouraging children to be more innovative and adventurous in their thinking when responding to visual images. These strategies have emerged from the findings of a qualitative research study (conducted by the author) that focused on critical and creative engagement amongst Australian primary and secondary students involved in visual arts education. The purpose of the paper is to show not only the benefits of including visual communication in multimodal approaches to learning but also to show the strategies currently being applied in schools to teaching children to effectively decode and encode artefacts of their own visual culture. These strategies should enable them to develop skills as critical and aesthetic responders to forms of visual communication as well as effective visual communicators who create their own images and artefacts.