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Visual Thought: Using Images for Communication and Learning
Visual Thought means using images and associations for thinking, communicating and learning.
Most teachers believe that ideas are best communicated by words, since words are backed by precise definitions (such as in a dictionary or encyclopedia).
These definitions make words exact, uniform in meaning from person to person, and logical.
In contrast, pictures, images, associations are:
- Remembered easily (even imprinted)
- Inexact and idiosyncratic
- Open to many interpretations
- Subject to layers of meaning
- Subject to endless elaboration (worth 1,000 words)
- Multidimensional and multifaceted
- One dimensional = a point
- Two dimensional = line drawing
- Three dimensional = a photograph, drawing in perspective
- Four dimensional = a timeline, a sequence of pictures or motion pictures
- Multidimensional = a hologram
- Immediately grasped, then pondered upon, then unraveled further
- Creative
- Emotional and compelling
- Beautiful, ugly or anything in between
- Contemplative and meditative
What an amazing list! Seems like a teacher's dream…higher-order thinking…a no-loose proposition if teachers focus upon a framework for teaching with images.
So, why don't more teachers base instruction on images?
Visual Thought in Instruction
The reason that images are used so little in education is the same reason that talking is used so much more than is appropriate, i.e., "talk is cheap."
Creating instructional images requires skill, planning and lots of time.
Sidebar
In addition, most images, except teacher-created or royalty-free images, are controlled by copyright laws. And, while teachers my claim a one-time "fair use" of almost anything that relates to an immediate lesson, the storing of the image (for use later) is not allowed unless written permission from the copyright holder is on file.
What teacher wants to spend the time building a lesson that is based upon an image that cannot be reused?
Talking "off the cuff", the most frequent method employed by teachers, require minimal preparation time, minimal skill (teachers can read directly from the teacher edition), and minimal cost.
Of course, it doesn't seem fair that the students' instructional outcomes are also low quality (to match the quality and scope of these inputs), after all, the teacher did throw in some personal opinions, stories, and maybe a joke.
Guess what? This is boring for students.
Even worse, the verbal teaching process is inefficient because while the teacher was talking, students (at least the ones that were listening) were translating the words into visual pictures or "sense-of-touch" pictures. And, these pictures were layered with the students' feelings, sensations, spatial awareness, sense of time, sense of color, sense of space, sense of depth, and sense of movement.
Students remember these self-created images in almost their entirety with little effort, while they require 17 repetitions (or more) to remember a word (and with luck, its related concept).
Bridging the Gap from Talk to Images: Graphic Organizers
Graphic Organizers are important learning tools because visual thought is so important in learning.
Visual thought is more basic than verbal/ logical thought; and easier to learn. And, visual thought wins in building memory skills, leaving the repetition of words so far back in the dust that you can't see the looser (verbal repetition), even with a pair of binoculars. Visual thought is more efficient... remember the adage about how many words a picture is worth?
Teachers need to consider that visual tools may reach students (and communicate concepts, constructs, ideas, and information) in ways that talking (lecturing) to students seldom can.
Graphic Organizers reach this group through a preferred channel of learning, so using Graphic Organizers is an important tool to target through your students' Visual Intelligence skills.
The group of children that think primarily by using pictures may be around 25% of the school age population. But, it really doesn't matter if the actual number is 24%, or 30%, or 20%.
Teachers need to teach all children.
Fortunately, experiences with visual thought are beneficial to the 75% of children that learn primarily by tactile ways, and the 1% that learn best through verbal-auditory channels.
When visual learning is added as a strategy for classroom communication, everyone benefits.
And what is the easiest way to add visual learning to classroom communication? Graphic Organizers, of course.
Reaching 24% of your students in a more profound way, because your instruction targets their preferred sensory modality, results in better student outcomes from that group.
Helping 75% of your students explore visual thinking benefits that group because they need to learn to communicate with people that are primarily visual thinkers. They might encounter a visual mode professor or boss someday, and might need to know how to change their language to communicate in another way.