Bildämnets roll i en bildrik värld : Visuell litteracitet och undervisning

Sammanfattning

The study aims to understand how Swedish art teachers view the term visual literacy and how this takes shape in art education in order to meet the students’ everyday life. A life that today is more visual than it has ever been and that they need the tools to interpret. In this study, I used a qualitative approach and conducted semi-structured interviews with four art teachers. The results show that visual literacy is not a commonly used term that all of the teachers in the study use to describe the skill set that is included in visual literacy. It also shows that all the art teachers see a need for the students to develop their skills to analyse pictures. However, the time that the curriculum allows to teach about visual literacy is not sufficient to develop these skills. The results also show that the students lack previous knowledge on how to interpret images from earlier stages of their schooling. This study concluded that the art subject might not be enough to meet the demands of the analytic skills that you need in today’s society, but the art teachers see the importance. Moreover, the study also concluded that the term visual literacy might not be the term frequently used by art teachers. The study in itself is not enough to create an overall picture, but it shows that this is a relevant issue to carry out further research on.