Emerging Visual Literacy through Enactments by Visual Analytics and Students

This paper investigates the potential aspects of visual literacy that might appear when visual analytics and students interact in social science secondary classrooms. Interacting with visual technology likely demands new forms of literacy as various dimensions of complexity emerge in such learning activities where reading imposes order and relevance on what is displayed. However, only a few studies have evaluated how these visual processes emerge. Applying a socio-material semiotic approach, this paper examines the interactions between teachers, students and a visual analytics application, clarifying what strengthens or weakens the socio-material relations at work in emerging visual literacy. Methodologically, a design-based research approach is chosen. Notably, it is the early stages of the designed-based research cycle that are applied. Interventions were designed and conducted in five classes in three secondary schools in Sweden (97 students). The visual analytics application introduced was Statistics eXplorer. For each class, two to three lessons were video recorded to capture how the students interacted with the application. The socio-material analyses show that the interactions between the visual analytics and the students were both strengthened and weakened by different social as well as material forces. The actions were directed by visual properties such as movement, highlighting, and color, properties that often resulted in quick vision or locked vision. This paper argues that there needs to be a close didactic alignment and deeper knowledge of how visual interfaces attract students’ attention and how students’ visual literacy emerges in that relationship.