The influence of the instruction of visual design principles on improving pre-service teachers’ visual literacy

Abstract

This study investigated whether the instruction of visual design principles had an influence on pre-service teachers’ perception and analysis (interpretation) of visual materials. In addition, the relationships between pre-service teachers’ visual intelligence and their perception and analysis (interpretation) of visual materials were also explored. Participants were 86 pre-service teachers who took a one-credit required educational technology course at a mid-western university in the United States. Some participants were absent in the weeks when data were collected, resulting in a total of 59 responses included in data analysis. Findings implied that the instruction of visual design principles could possibly improve pre-service teachers’ visual literacy. Suggestions for future research were discussed.

Introduction

To see is to believe. Since the dawn of human civilization, human beings have started to communicate and learn through what they see (Burnmark, 2002). Visualization has become an important way for human beings to learn and perceive things (Dastani, 2002). In today’s information age, visualization is even more important because visual information is ubiquitous in the world as media technology rapidly grows and evolves. Visuals especially weigh more in printed materials. According to Harrison (2003), the ratio of visuals to text per page in printed documents such as fliers and reports is increasing steadily. The use of visuals in textbooks is also proliferating. Pettersson (2002) contended that there are greater numbers of pictures used in today’s textbooks for each generation. In addition to books, educational media such as television, video players, and computers have been challenging people to the new way of teaching and learning that requires a clear understanding of the role of visual communication (Bustle, 2004).

Living in this visual world, the ability to understand, interpret, and create visual information seems vital. While visual materials are not automatically interpreted in the human mind, learners have to be educated to become visually literate in order to equip themselves with skills to interpret content of visual messages as well as text (Glasgow, 1994). The learned ability to understand, analyze, interpret, and create visual information is considered visual literacy (Braden, 1996, Burnmark, 2002, Burns, 2006, Lohr, 2008, Metros and Woolsey, 2006, Pettersson, 1993, Pettersson, 2002). Dondis (1973) described the importance of visual literacy as “what you see is a major part of what you know, and visual literacy can help us to see what we see and know what we know” (p. 19).

In the field of education, visual messages as part of teaching and learning materials can be seen in textbooks, video, pictures, and the Internet. Teachers and students are exposed to visual messages everyday. Although the use of visuals is increasing, it does not necessarily increase the effectiveness of learning. Any kind of information should be well-designed to be readable and worth reading for readers (Pettersson, 1989). Pettersson (1993) also indicated that poor design can inadvertently confuse learners, and learners may end up less competent than before. It is important to design visuals that do not mislead or confuse people. To enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning requires both the well-designed visual instructional materials and the ability to perceive and interpret the visual messages. According to Mayer (2001), visuals and words are good facilitators for learning if they are appropriately designed to help people construct knowledge through the cognitive process of selection, organization, and integration.

Glasgow (1994) indicated that learners have to be schooled to be visually literate in order to equip themselves with skills to interpret the content of visual messages as well as text. Avgerinou (2009) advocated that educators should start taking systematic steps toward including visual literacy into their teaching. Although the importance of visual literacy has been recognized, relevant higher education literature on teaching visual literacy is only now emerging (Felten, 2008). In a research effort that discussed the teaching of visual literacy, Sosa (2009) included visual design instructions such as principles of page and screen layout, use of color and font, appropriate spacing, and use of appropriate images in teaching pre-service teachers to create technology products. It was discovered that pre-service teachers’ works improved dramatically in terms of look and usability. The author concluded that visual literacy truly is a missing element of many technology integration courses.

Researchers have suggested that learning visual design principles should help both designers and learners to gain ability to compose, analyze, and interpret visual materials (Carter, 2003, Graham et al., 2005). Visual design principles such as contrast, alignment, repetition, and proximity (CARP; Lohr, 2008, Williams, 1994) have been provided and promoted to help people gain visual literacy. Pre-service teachers will become K-12 teachers who need to select or create visual materials for their teaching and to teach students how to analyze and interpret visuals. Therefore, there was a need to know if offering pre-service teachers a visual design principles lesson would improve their ability to perceive, analyze, and interpret visual materials. Additionally, Moriarty (1996) indicated that visual intelligence has something to do with visual perception and analysis. Therefore, there was a need to know if pre-service teachers’ perception and analysis of visual materials were related to visual intelligence.

To appropriately design and interpret visual materials requires a great number of skills and knowledge about visual design principles. Lohr (2008) suggested that the PAT model could help people achieve the goal of designing good visual materials. PAT stands for perceptions, actions, and tools. They are three basic concepts of visual design that can improve learner perceptions by using proper tools of design with the manipulation of appropriate actions of design.

Perceptions in the PAT model refer to three principles that the human mind uses to recognize information, which are figure/ground, hierarchical, and gestalt. Actions consist of four elements recommended by Williams (2008). They are contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. Lohr (2008) mentioned that actions “deal with the changes or movements that have been made to instructional information or to the elements of information assembled to convey an idea” (p. 80). She concluded that actions, if applied well with the appropriate use of tools of design, could contribute to effective and professional results. As for tools, they are regarded as the basic design elements. Most designers take color, simple shape, space, depth, and typography into consideration when designing visuals (Lohr, 2008). All the tools have to be manipulated with actions to create a good visual material. There is much to explore among perceptions, actions, and tools. Nevertheless, to enhance the quality of the investigation, this study focused on the actions of visual design which are contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.

Contrast is used to create a difference among visual elements to make the main point of information apparent. It is utilized in visual materials to avoid elements that are similar (Williams, 2008). When designing visual materials, strong differences can be made in size, shape, color, line, thickness, and typefaces. Williams asserted that “contrast is often the most important visual attraction on a page” (p. 13).

Repetition is used to repeat some elements of the design throughout the entire piece. Repetition is commonly seen and employed in any kind of design such as headline font and size and text font and size in newsletters, books, or magazines. Repetition can also be considered as consistency, which is essential to a successful design (Williams, 2008). The purpose of repetition is to unify and strengthen the visual interest of visual materials so they are likely to be read.

Alignment is used to connect all the elements in the same visual material. Williams (2008) stated, “Nothing should be placed on the page arbitrarily. Every item should have a visual connection with something else on the page” (p. 33). Aligning elements to the left, center, right, top, or bottom could be used to create the connection among elements. Good use of alignment could unify the elements on the entire design to create a formal, fun, interesting, or sophisticated look that helps learners perceive and interpret the visual materials.

Proximity is used to organize elements in the visual materials by grouping all the related items together or separating the unrelated items. Proximity implies a relationship (Williams, 2008). When related items are grouped together, they become one visual unit, which assists learners in reading and remembering the information.

With the good use of actions, it would be easier for learners to perceive, analyze, and interpret visual materials to get the accurate messages that designers intend to convey (Lohr, 2008). However, to design instructional materials based on the visual design principles is one thing; how learners perceive, analyze, and interpret such materials is another. This implies the problem that learners might not be able to perceive and interpret visual materials in the way that designers expect them to do. Boling, Eccarius, Frick, and Smith (2004) argued that the intended meanings of visual materials may often be misunderstood or unrecognized by learners. This problem leads to the need of looking for ways to help learners perceive, analyze, and interpret what designers propose to convey.

Perception is organizing and analyzing information that we pay attention to in the visual world. People select the information they want to keep and ignore the rest, which is considered the first step of perception (Stern & Robinson, 1994). Pettersson (2002) indicated that experiences, values, thoughts, and knowledge are what people rely on to perceive, understand, analyze, and interpret. Therefore, perception is a subjective process. However, it does not mean that people can not learn to interpret visual materials. In fact, the process of interpreting visual information is often learned in a way similar to how people learn languages (Boling et al., 2004). That is, the ability to accurately interpret visual messages can be learned. Acquiring the skills and knowledge of visual literacy can help people analyze how visual materials are created, which contributes to people’s understanding and interpretation of visual materials (Bamford, 2001, Yeh, 2008). Carter (2003) contended that learning visual design principles is a productive way to promote skills and knowledge of visual literacy. In other words, the understanding of visual design principles might improve people’s perception, analysis, and interpretation of visual materials.

In addition to the understanding of visual design principles, visual intelligence might have an influence on people’s perception and interpretation of visual materials (Moriarty, 1996). Vision is not only the passive perception of human beings but also an intelligent process of active construction (Matusitz, 2005). Visual intelligence is part of Gardener’s (1983) theory of multiple intelligences. According to Gardener (1983), visual intelligence “is the capacities to perceive the visual world accurately, to perform transformations and modifications upon one’s initial perceptions, and to be able to re-create aspects of one’s visual experience, even in the absence of relevant physical stimuli” (p. 173). Visual intelligence includes the sensitivity to color, line, shape, space, form, and the relationships exist among those elements. Gardener (1993) expressed that with appropriate instruction, encouragement, and enrichment, intelligences could be developed to a reasonably high level of performance. As for the assessment of multiple intelligences, a standardized test is not the way Gardner thought multiple intelligences should be measured. Gardener (1993) stated that assessment could be broader and more humane than just ranking people. Multiple measures such as observations, checklists, activities, chat with parents and students, and school records could be used to evaluate students’ multiple intelligences in the classrooms.

This is a world of visuals. Visual communication has become one of the important channels of communication among human beings. In the field of education, visual communication is as much a primary system as verbal language because visual aids are widely used in classrooms and teaching materials. The majority of texts that primary school students use today include the combination of written and visual elements (Simpson, 2005). Matusitz (2005) also expressed that the social context of today’s college students is more academically dependent on visual communication than in the past. The world of text is now challenged by the world of pictures (Mirzoeff, 1998). Living in the visual world, people must possess a foundation in visuals in order to understand and interpret visual messages accurately. This foundation or ability is considered visual literacy (Portewig, 2004). However, most people, especially in-service and pre-service teachers who are responsible for educating younger generations, do not have the opportunity to learn about visual literacy in schools or at the workplace. Schools should begin to introduce concepts of visual literacy and equipped students with the skills of understanding, analyzing, interpreting, synthesizing, and creating visual information (Burns, 2006).

Researchers have acknowledged the critical role of visual messages and the importance of understanding visual literacy in education. For example, Matusitz (2005) stressed the significance of understanding the elements of visual communication. Metros and Woolsey (2006) emphasized the needs for students to receive training of visual literacy. Pettersson (1990) concluded in his study that both teachers and students have to learn how to express themselves with visuals as well as how to read and use visuals. Matusitz (2005) argued that the greater skills students have in visual communication, the more effective they would be in analyzing and interpreting visual messages. The necessity of gaining and improving visual literacy, especially for teachers and students, has been addressed in prior studies. However, there has been limited effort to explore how the understanding of visual design principles influences pre-service teachers in terms of interpreting designers’ intended meanings behind visual materials. Also, while Moriarty (1996) and Matusitz (2005) asserted that visual intelligence has something to do with people’s perception, analysis, and interpretation of visuals, there has been limited relevant research conducted in the field of teacher education.

Teachers play an important role in selecting or creating instructional visual materials to help students learn. Teachers have to be visual interpreters, and sometimes they have to be visual designers too. In the teacher preparation process, it is therefore important to help pre-service teachers develop knowledge and skills of visual literacy to gain the ability of understanding visual materials appropriately. The need of empowering pre-service teachers with visual literacy is obvious. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the instruction of visual design principles had an influence on pre-service teachers’ perception and analysis (interpretation) of visual materials in order to improve their visual literacy. Additionally, the relationship between pre-service teachers’ visual intelligence and their perception and analysis (interpretation) of visual materials was also examined. The research questions for this study included the following:

• What were pre-service teachers’ ratings of visual materials created with the visual design principles of contrast, alignment, proximity, and repetition?

• Did pre-service teachers’ perception of visual materials differ between those who received and did not receive the lesson of visual design principles?

• Did pre-service teachers’ analysis (interpretation) of visual materials differ between those who received and did not receive the lesson of visual design principles?

• Were there relationships between pre-service teachers’ perception and analysis of visual materials and their self-reported visual intelligence?