Position Paper Sample on Visual Literacy

Throughout the schools in the world, different teaching methods have been adopted and appropriately seen to fit the transfer of knowledge to students more smoothly and efficiently. In this case, the stakeholders have been able to select the ones fit to be applied in the curricula and use them in disseminating information learnt on to the students. Two main literacies are seen as fit for the effective teaching of the course materials to students depending on the opinions of the partakers, the preferences of the learners and their proficiency in imbibing knowledge on students. They include the visual literacy and textual literacy. The visual literacy concerns the employment of the practical pictures, experiences and tangible items which the students can experience first-hand as they are being taught on different subjects. In this way, they will be able to gain a lasting impression in their minds interconnecting what they were able to learn personally with the practical in the same fields undertaken as a corresponding application of the concepts in their daily lives. In most cases, the visual literacy approach is recommended by a diverse educational elite as being the most effective way of teaching students various concepts in different disciplines being taught. The psychologists have been able to establish the extent to which the visual literacy can be effective and helpful in the part of the learners. On the other hand, there is the use of the textual literacy where concepts relating to different disciplines to which the students are being taught are transferred to the theoretically without the employment of their corresponding practical counterparts for the safety of effectiveness (Serafini, Frank. 34). In this way, the students can take in the concepts without practising the practical first hand, hence being not effective in the dissemination of knowledge to the students being serviced. In the paper, discussed is the concept and view that schools have traditionally emphasized textual literacy, as well as the opinion regarding it being a sound method in reaching out to many students. Additionally, there is the proposal that it should be replaced with the visual literacy kind of teaching because of the sufficiently reasonable supporting elaborations featured alongside the arguments.

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First, it can be evident that schools have traditionally emphasized the textual literacy. It involves the imbibition of the students with the theoretical knowledge with no much emphasis being put on the practical parts to enhance the visual impression, understanding and long-term memories of the students. In this case, the students take indifferent concepts which are not laced with the actual experiences. It is a curriculum that is only effective for some of the disciplines which do not require any visual practicals such as the literature, religious educations and the subjects calling for the creativity of the students. It can thus be an effective approach in the education of such areas because they majorly centre on the theoretical parts that call for the imaginations from the students being handled in the process (Flood, James, Shirley Brice Heath, and Diane Lapp. 24). Textual literacy is also an effective tool where their students being dealt with are still too young to embrace the culture of integration of the practical segments of learning practices. They are much better off when they are taught to memorize the concepts in the form of songs. They will, however, not be comfortable with the handling of the practical procedures presented in the pursuit of the visual kind of curriculum. They may also see the visual approaches as being the parts of the children's plays since they are still young, hence the textual approach remaining as the only refuge for their effective teaching and learning.

Moreover, the textual literacy is efficient in the cases where the students have different learning mechanisms, with the majority falling under the preference of the textual approach of teaching and learning. In this case, most of the students are seen auguring well with the theoretical literacies hence the curriculum remaining as the only chief solace for the effective teaching and learning processes in the schools.

However, textual literacy cannot stand alone in most situations to effectively address the tasks of teaching and learning. In this case, the visual approach of the curriculum is the standing alternative to couple with the textual literacy for excellent proficiency. It is because visual literacy is an essential tool for the teaching of the students due to a vast array of substantive reasons. One of them is the enhancement of the visual impression of the students. In this case, the visual tools that correspond to the theories being taught can express the ideas and points more precisely and comprehensively. They do not require a lot of wording which is seen to waste some of the time as the students try to understand them (Whittingham, Jeff, Stephanie Huffman, et al. 45). Also, the visual literacy enhances the memories of the students which will help them understand the concepts for significantly more extended periods of time.

Cumulatively, although most of the schools have been adopting the textual literacy curriculum, the synchronization with the visual literacy will further boost the ease of understanding and memories of students and expounded in the above exhaustion.

Works cited

Flood, James, Shirley Brice Heath, and Diane Lapp. Handbook of research on teaching literacy through the communicative and visual arts, volume II: A project of the International Reading Association. Routledge, 2015.

Serafini, Frank. Reading the Visual: An Introduction to Teaching Multimodal Literacy. , 2014. Print.

Whittingham, Jeff, Stephanie Huffman, Wendy Rickman, and Cheryl Wiedmaier. Technological Tools for the Literacy Classroom. , 2013. Internet resource.