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v i
Empower: Creating a Personal SymbolTo take an active stance in reading and interpreting
visual culture, viewers need to be confident using
visual cues to communicate ideas or emotions that
words often cannot adequately capture. For this rea-
son, learning to use visual modes of communication is
empowering.
In the sidebar “Dialogue: Self-Symbols” on
page 12, we provide a sample of a typical conver-
sation that occurs among students as they do the
Self-Symbol activity. This dialogue shows the ways in
which students can see how their self-symbols reflect
their ways of thinking.
Reflect: Underlying IdeasThe Draw a Chair, Mind-sets, and Self-Symbol activi-
ties can reveal insights if students are guided to see
the ways in which the images were made, as well
as the strategies used to make them. Because these
activities reveal information about “ways of know-
ing,” they in turn affect interpretations of visual
culture.
For example, when one attempts to categorize the
chair drawings (see Appendix B), there is no rule stat-
ing that the same chair drawing cannot be placed in
more than one category. In fact, in observing hun-
dreds of people of all ages engaged in doing this
task, we have noticed that participants often want
to place chair drawings in more than one category,
but do not. This behavior indicates that many people,
especially those educated in Western cultures, per-
ceive categories as separate and not overlapping.
They may have a predisposition to contextualize
(“Under certain circumstances, the object could be
placed in both of these categories”), but they feel
constrained by an unspoken rule. A critical-thinking
question we could introduce is: “Who creates the
rules for how you see the world?”
S e l f - S y m b o l s
In the spaces provided below, experiment with creat-
ing a simple visual symbol that communicates some-
thing about you. When you feel comfortable with
the symbol you have devised, make your mark in the
bold-framed rectangle.
1 1B e l i e f s
1 2 C h a p t e r 1
Dialogue: Self-Symbols
Sam: Well, Carol, you’re being consistent.
Carol: What?
Sam: In the first task you did an h-chair—simple,
direct. Then you sorted into just two categories—
“good” and “mediocre.” Now you make your per-
sonal symbol your initials.
Carol: I keep telling you. I’m not very creative.
Sam: But you find great, quick ways to solve a tricky
assignment.
Carol: I think that’s how I look at things. What you
see is what you get.
Sam: So, what do you see in mine?
Carol: It looks like the Nike symbol. Are you into
sports?
Sam: I’m on the track team and I love running.
Jake: Me, too.
Carol: But your symbol is just some squiggly lines.
What does it have to do with running?
Jake: It’s like the wind blowing across my face when
I run. Running feels like freedom, I guess.
Sam: Your symbol is kind of like abstract art. There’s
kind of a hidden meaning. When you explain it,
it makes sense.
Carol: How did you categorize the chairs?
Jake: Simple/Realistic, Complex/Realistic,
Simple/Abstract, Complex/Abstract. I was trying
to overlap stuff. I think that’s the contextual
mind-set.
Carol: Okay, Sandy. Let me take a stab at yours.
You love the sun?
Sandy: It’s just a simple symbol for exploding ideas.
Derek: Well, I’m with Carol. I’m a weight lifter and
that’s what I tried to show.
Sam: Maybe our mind-sets really do have something
to do with how we see things. Carol’s and Derek’s
are concrete. So they have trouble with Jake’s squig-
gly lines. And instead of exploding ideas, they see
the sun in Sandy’s symbol.
Jake: Do you think advertisers think about concrete
and abstract messages?
1.3 Self Symbols
Our everyday actions often reveal much about
ourselves to ourselves if we pay attention and reflect
on our spontaneous first impulses. Interpretations tell
as much about the interpreter as what is interpreted.
The categories that we construct reflect how we
know the world and they help us to function in the
world. Human reasoning involves categorization.
However, the categories that we create, if not exam-
ined, can limit our understanding of others and can
limit creative or imaginative thinking.
In the chair categorization task, a common pattern
is for some participants to categorize chairs (they talk
about “wood chairs” and “La-Z-Boys”), while others
categorize drawings of chairs. When a participant is
talking about physical aspects of the chair drawings
such as “line drawings,” “armchairs,” or “straight-
back chairs,” he or she is revealing a concrete, literal
way of knowing. A contextual thinker might be con-
cerned that “you cannot really categorize a drawing
without understanding the intent of the maker.” Still
others name their categories with abstract generali-
ties, such as “artistic,” “symbolic,” “special,” or
“ambivalent.” Understanding a range of mind-sets—
ways of processing information—is important in
understanding the meanings of visual culture. Visual
literacy is not just being able to “read" something;
it is the ability to interpret not just the obvious but
also the hidden.
Catalyst: Ideas into Action in Your Classroom Having documented diverse groups of people per-
forming the Draw a Chair activity over a period of
years, we have identified some distinct patterns of
response—for example, an acute fear of not being
able to draw. The chair continues to provide a con-
sistently fruitful subject for close exploration. It is
accessible across ages, developmental and experience
levels, and even cultural and ethnic differences, all of
which add intriguing layers to discussion.
The drawing activity clearly makes the point that
one need not have artistic talent to engage in visual
culture. We continually find it helpful to emphasize
that an h-chair is a simple but elegant solution to the
task. It may not be a masterpiece, but it succinctly
communicates the idea of a chair. We tell participants
that they are quite able to do the task. They have
creative visual skills, if not technical skills, that tend
to lie dormant because they are more often asked to
be passive receivers of information (particularly the
visual) instead of active co-constructors of visual
information.
Finally, activities like this one allow us to remind
students that it is through actively manipulating
visual communication that they will learn how to
understand and articulate its deeper meanings.
Stating these contentions over and over can alleviate
anxiety and reinforce the intended learning.
Making Activities Age Appropriate
At this point you may be asking, “But how do I do
these activities with my fourth graders?”
All age groups can successfully engage in the
Draw a Chair activity. However, the discussion that
follows the activity would vary greatly depending
on the metacognitive skills of the participants. The
activities as described in this chapter can be most
fully engaged and understood by learners aged
thirteen and older, although such age designations
are arbitrary and do not describe all learners. Let’s
consider how to adapt these activities by looking
at three general categories of age and developmen-
tal level.
Primary The majority of five-year-olds can draw
a chair. However, at this stage, children would
1 3B e l i e f s
generally be engaged in figuring out conceptual
categories—colors, mammals, things you can sit
on—and the chairs they draw may not be connected
to adult concepts of chairs at all. So asking children
to form groups based on how their images look
would make little sense to them. Their chairs are
not necessarily connected to the real world of
chairs. In this case, a more appropriate debriefing
would be to ask for volunteers to “tell about
your drawing” in order to make the experiential
connection.
Knowing this, the teacher would need to consider
the learning objective. Our stated objective for the
Draw a Chair activity is to make explicit the varying
sociocultural filters and cognitive patterns that
influence a learner’s understanding of chair and,
therefore, visual culture in general. Clearly, this
objective would not be appropriate for five-year-olds.
However, at a very concrete level, the teacher could
point out that, based on the differences among their
drawings, all children have ideas about what chairs
are like. The teacher might demonstrate this by
gathering several different types of chairs in the
classroom (straight-back, cozy, office, rocking, etc.)
and asking children to choose the one in which they
would most like to sit. A concrete connection could
be made between the chairs they draw and their
experiences.
Nevertheless, there would be developmental limits
to the larger application of the activity. Certainly, the
Mind-sets activity would not be appropriate, since
most children at this age would almost exclusively
be employing literal ways of knowing. Likewise, the
Self-Symbol activity would be limited in its applicabil-
ity. But, if children were given a clear and concrete
focus for developing an image of, say, a favorite pos-
session, this activity would result in a concrete symbol
associated with self.
1 4 C h a p t e r 1
Content and Process Questions
Content Question
Can you envision some possible ways of thinking that
are missing from our mind-set distinctions?
There are many ways of approaching the idea of predis-
positions. Much has been written about learning styles,
interactive styles, and personality traits. If you have
engaged in some form of Myers-Briggs analysis, for
example, you may see some similarities to what we call
mind-sets.
Process Questions
Do you feel uncomfortable with the idea of “categoriz-
ing” people according to their mind-sets?
Maybe you are very contextual in your thinking. Our
purpose is not to pigeonhole people. Rather, being con-
sciously aware of dominant thought patterns will help us
understand not only our own thought processes but also
the reactions we have to the way others are thinking.
For example, when considering complex issues such as
“What constitutes pornography in art?” a literal and a
contextual thinker will probably come to irreconcilable
conclusions because their ways of knowing are so radi-
cally different.
Did you find yourself coming to conclusions very quickly?
One obstacle that tends to block our visual perception is
a tendency to reach judgments too quickly. For example,
a literal mind-set often leads to quick judgments because
the person becomes immediately impatient when he or
she perceives that alternative judgments seem to stray
from the straight path to the truth.
The first step to removing this obstacle is to articulate
one’s own thoughts, consciously setting them aside (but
not abandoning them), while considering the circum-
stances in which an alternative judgment might hold
true. This is an acquired skill that requires practice.
Intermediate With age and experience (the actual
age will vary greatly from one child to another),
children’s ability to understand context increases
dramatically. In Piagetian terms, children at this
stage of development can reason quite skillfully,
although they are primarily focused on concrete
constructs. They line up linear strings of if/then
propositions and argue with surprising agility. For
example, we have all observed instances in which
children spent the majority of recess determining
the rules of their game rather than playing the
game. With this in mind, we see that the range of
chairs drawn by this age group may actually be nar-
rower than those of primary-aged children because
they may be attempting to adhere to a set of
“rules” about what a chair is supposed to look like.
Their chair imagery will focus primarily on concrete
representations.
Again, directly teaching about mind-sets as they
are presented in this chapter would not be appropri-
ate to this age group, since children’s ways of know-
ing would be primarily literal, dualistic, and linear.
Nevertheless, the teacher could note instances in
which a child chooses to think of a chair metaphori-
cally, since this would be an indicator of a more
sophisticated way of understanding and engaging
the visual world.
The learning objective might focus on categoriz-
ing the chair drawings as a way of understanding dif-
ferences in conceptions of chairs, but the extension
of how the learner draws a chair to the way in which
he or she sees other things would best be made at a
very concrete level. So, for example, the follow-up
activity described for primary-aged children (gather-
ing a variety of chairs in the classroom) could be
extended for this age group, but would still focus
on concrete differences in chairs and learners’ experi-
ences of chairs. Nevertheless, some learners will
demonstrate more advanced understandings and
should be encouraged to do so.
Secondary The traditional Piagetian indicator of
entry into adulthood is called “formal operations.”
This means that a learner gains the ability to reason
regarding abstract concepts. Of course, it is important
to remember that Piaget also posited that all cogni-
tive development is mode-specific. That is, learners
move through stages differently depending on the
discipline. For example, a learner may understand
mathematics at a concrete and literal level while
being able to interpret visual information abstractly
and contextually.
Teaching for Student Engagement
Teachers who would like to try out the exercises
described in this chapter should see Appendix C for
a specific example of how the Draw a Chair exercise
can work. Appendix D can be copied as a student
handout for the activity. Appendix E can be used to
make overhead transparencies to guide the group
process of drawing a chair.
One basic premise of this book is that learning at
any age happens most fully when students are given
opportunities to act on their knowledge and beliefs.
This idea has many implications for teachers. People
learn through action because they are sharing control
of the flow of information. Control is at the heart of
motivation. If teachers wish to motivate students, the
students must feel that it is within their power to
affect outcomes. When students feel this empower-
ment and know the information that they share will be
respectfully considered and valued, they will become
active constructors of their own meaning rather than
passive conduits of someone else’s belief system.
For an experienced teacher or facilitator, this
means taking the risk of giving up some control. To
1 5B e l i e f s
truly engage in the construction of new perspectives,
the teacher must be ready for some unanticipated
ideas to emerge. This is a rewarding but complex
process that requires the suspension of initial judg-
ments regarding students’ statements in order to
allow ideas, even those the teacher disagrees with,
to be voiced and then considered by the group.
When facilitating group discussions that focus on
objects students have created, we find that lively dis-
cussion happens when all group members have the
opportunity to voice alternative views. This activity
builds a sense of safety and respect.
In order to give voice to many points of view,
large groups should be divided into smaller groups to
allow for dialogue. Obviously, the teacher cannot be
present for every small group discussion to mediate
disagreement or mitigate misinformation. The
teacher will need to trust that active, engaged dia-
logue—people making their thoughts public and
then taking responsibility for them—is better, even
when it gets a little noisy, than disengaged passivity.
Also, since the teacher cannot monitor every discus-
sion, some misconceptions may occur, but they can be
corrected later.
Having students create an image or object that
“states their position” visually can alleviate some of
the tension of laying their beliefs out in the open.
Then the discussion can be about the object and
what the object seems to be saying. This technique
is quite effective in allowing all voices to be heard.
Finally, as experienced teachers know, maintaining
good control of what can be controlled is an excel-
lent counterbalance to what might at first seem to
be a chaotic approach. This approach requires careful
preplanning and anticipation of what the teacher
wants to happen and what actually could happen.
How is the space arranged? How will students get
into groups efficiently? How will students move
around? How will students know what to do when
the noise of movement and activity makes it difficult
for them to hear? These are all basics of well-planned
teaching, but if the approach is new, these basics
require direct attention until they become second
nature.
Principles for Curriculum Development
So, what are some underlying, “take-away” principles
introduced in this chapter that teachers could use for
creating a curriculum supportive of a visual culture
perspective? A first foundational principle to learning
about visual culture is a belief in the power of belief.
It is critical to pass on to students the idea that what
they believe, the assumptions they make, and the
values they hold will shape their world. If they
believe they are powerless to reshape the visual
world around them, they will be manipulated by its
messages. So, belief systems, assumptions, and values
about the world in general and about visual informa-
tion in particular need to be exposed.
A second foundational principle to learning about
visual culture is that deconstructing unexamined
ideas—exploding them—leads to deeper understand-
ing of them and motivation for change. Individual
beliefs are formed from historical and cultural narra-
tives that pervade our lives. These beliefs often
unconsciously influence patterns of conceptual organ-
ization of and behaviors related to the visual environ-
ment. Such organizational schemes are the bases of
visual culture knowledge—how we know the world.
Through a process of recognizing our conceptual
schemes, we expose beliefs that are taken for
granted and can begin to explode our assumptions
about some ways of knowing being better than
others. As art educators, it is our task to help stu-
dents consciously own the sets of ideas that drive
their behaviors.
1 6 C h a p t e r 1
The third foundational principle that undergirds
learning about visual culture is a belief that as art
educators, a key goal of our teaching is to foster
democratic values. We can do this by helping stu-
dents to gain access to and be empowered to act on
their visual environments in ways that reflect their
beliefs and values. One access point is to examine
critically the larger systems that encompass their
lives—belief systems, patterns of thought, represen-
tations of self—that are directly related to the perva-
sive influx of visual imagery that tells them what to
believe, how to think, and how to be.
Notes1 Martin Fishbein and I. Ajzen, Belief, Attitude, Intention
and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research
(Reading, MA: Addison/Wesley, 1975).
2 John Berger, Ways of Seeing, (New York: Penguin Books,
1991; original work published 1972); Joseph Margolis,
Selves and Other Texts: The Case for Cultural Realism
(University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2001); Mab Segrest, “On Being White and Other
Lies.” In Sing, Whisper, Shout, Pray! Feminist Visions for a
Just World, M. Jacqui Alexander, Lisa Albrecht, Sharon
Day, and Mab Segrest, eds. (Fort Bragg, CA: Edgework
Books, 2003), 243–285.
3 Stephen D. Brookfield, The Power of Critical Theory:
Liberating Adult Learning and Teaching (New York:
Jossey-Bass, 2005); Fritjof Capra, The Hidden Connections:
Integrating the Biological, Cognitive, and Social
Dimensions of Life into a Science of Sustainability
(New York: Doubleday, 2002); Seth Chaiklin and Jean
Lave, Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity
and Context (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1993); Berger, Ways of Seeing; David Hyerle, Visual Tools
for Constructing Knowledge (Alexandria, VA: Association
for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1996);
Colin Renfrew and Chris Scarre, Cognition and Material
Culture: The Archaeology of Symbol Storage (Cambridge,
UK: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research,
1998).
4 Mary Belenky, B. M. Clinchy, N. R. Goldberger, and K. M.
Tarule, Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development
of Self, Voice, and Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1997;
original work published 1986).
5 Herbert Ginsburg and Sylvia Opper, Piaget’s Theory of
Intellectual Development, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1988).
1 7B e l i e f s
1 4 2
1 Prior to class, reproduce the handout shown in
Appendix D, one per student. For large groups,
these can be reduced to smaller formats that
allow several handouts cut from a one-page
photocopy.
2 In class, distribute the handout to all students,
asking them to follow the directions on the
handout.
3 When students are finished, explain all the steps
of the next task (shown below) before they begin.
For large groups in which significant conversation
will be generated, provide an overhead of instruc-
tions for visual reference. The steps are:
• Fold the handout in half to make the chair
visible without the text responses.
• Hold your chair drawing in front of your fore-
head so others can see it.
• Move around the room looking for other
drawings that look like yours.
• When you find other drawings that look like
yours, form a group with the people who
created them.
• Identify three characteristics that everyone
in the group shares.
• Name your group, based on your chair
drawings.
• Write down a belief that everyone in your
group agrees the chair drawings expose.
• Describe the type of conversation your group
had.
• Identify ways in which your chair drawings
relate to who you are and the beliefs you hold.
4 Drawing conclusions: Debrief the activity in turns,
by writing on an overhead transparency made
from Appendix E for each group, or by asking
students to write on their group’s overhead and
present their conclusions with their overhead
transparency.
5 When each group has debriefed, summarize their
conclusions by identifying the groups in relation-
ship to the categories established in Chapter 1 of
this book. These are:
Cozy chairs are representations of easy chairs,
overstuffed chairs, or recliners. A strategy might
be: “I created the chair I would like to be sitting
in right now” or “I wanted to create a chair that
would be comfortable.” This response is often
accompanied by a feeling of well-being and satis-
faction with the drawing.
Real chairs are those that reflect an attempt at a
realistic representation of a chair, often employing
one- and two-point perspective. Makers of real
chair images may express feelings of frustration
that the drawing does not look real enough.
The h-chair is one of the most common render-
ings. Creators of this type of chair are likely to
describe their approach as efficient and task-
oriented. In addition, the “h” chair creators often
express discomfort with the task and state, “I’m
not an artist. I can’t draw.”
Imagined chairs are visualized in the mind of the
creator and transferred to page. “I saw a chair in
my head and drew it,” they might say. They report
A p p e n d i x C
Appendix C: Step-by-Step Instructions forthe Draw a Chair Activity
feelings ranging from satisfaction to frustration,
depending on their perceived ability to reproduce
the imagined image.
Observed chairs are a result of a strategy in which
the maker looks at a chair in the room and draws
what is seen. These creators often report feeling
good about their end result, but may be frus-
trated with their technical skill. “I haven’t had to
draw something in a long time,” is a typical
response.
Outlier chairs are drawings that in some way defy
the conventional solutions to the task described
above. These may be more metaphorical or truly
original in their meaning. The explanation, “All
the world’s a chair” reflects such a strategy, often
accompanied by a satisfied feeling in creating a
unique way of perceiving a chair.
6 Point out the following, as they may apply:
• Everyone can do it because all participants,
regardless of age, cultural differences, or eth-
nicity have a shared idea of “chair” and can
quickly invent a strategy to share it visually.
• Although a great variety of chairs are pro-
duced, in the end, what we share socially and
culturally is apparent in our images and how
we talk about them.
• When we find others whose chair images are
like ours we find other connections. Images are
powerfully communicative of who we are.
• Those who draw realistic or literal chairs iden-
tify concrete, literal characteristics that they
share, such as, “We all are wearing red, have
tattoos, and eat meat.” These are very concrete
thoughts.
• Important beliefs are expressed in how the
group names itself. For example, a group who
names themselves “misfits” because their chairs
1 4 3
are outside the mainstream, will likely identify
shared characteristics such as not following
the current clothing style, often spending time
alone, or enjoying activities that involve risk.
Similarly, an “h” chair group will routinely
report that the type of conversation they had
was quick and efficient. A need for rapid, effec-
tive solutions will tend to cause members of
this group to make quick interpretations of
what they see.
• We are all capable, regardless of our beliefs
about our technical skill, of both producing
and interpreting a tremendous amount of
information from visual sources. Yet, in many
cases, we don’t think of ourselves as “being
artistic.”
• There is a false belief that only a select few
deemed “talented” develop artistic ability. This
encourages passive observation of, rather than
active participation in, constructing visual com-
munication. Perhaps more damaging, we can
come to believe that we are impervious to the
meanings embedded in visual messages, espe-
cially those designed to manipulate our choices.
The advertiser’s dream is the person who thinks
they are not influenced by visual messages!
Step-by-Step Instructions for the Draw a Chair Activity
1 4 4
First, in the space provided below, draw a chair. Then answer the following questions:
1 What strategy did you use to accomplish this task?
2 How did it feel to do this task?
A p p e n d i x D
Appendix D: Student Handout for the Draw a Chair Activity