Visual literacy shown through a magnifying lens by high school students

Purpose The purpose of this study is to evaluate student visual literacy skills using the newly designed visual literacy framework and visual literacy (VL) scale. Design/methodology/approach It includes a newly designed framework, a self-reporting questionnaire and a scale to evaluate an individual's VL skills and overall competency. The self-reporting questionnaire consists of 13 items with a five-point Likert scale. Findings The newly developed VL skill scale assessed the Fiji students’ competency (i.e. identify, understand, evaluate and communicate using visuals). The mean for the 13 items on VL skills showed average results, but 46.33% recorded high visual literacy competencies. The multiple linear regression analysis outcomes showed all 13 skills demonstrated significant contributions to becoming visually literate. Research limitations/implications The limitation of this study is that the questionnaire is self-reporting, so the evaluation can be highly rated. The implications are that relevant stakeholders will be able to devise strategies and content to improve visual literacy in Fiji. Practical implications Images are playing an important role today, especially after COVID-19, which forced the education system to go online. Online learning involves a lot of visuals, and as such, visual literacy is important to students so that they can successfully learn online. This paper brings out the important aspects of visual literacy, which needs to be understood by the students. Social implications In society, everything involves visuals. This paper introduces a visual literacy scale and a visual literacy tool to measure the visual competencies of individuals. If people understand the components of visual literacy, then visual competencies of the people will also improve. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first one on evaluating visual literacy competencies in Fiji and also in the South Pacific. The visual literacy tool is also new to the world.