The Teaching of Visual Literacy in Initial English Language Teacher Education

Abstract

The pressure on teacher education to prepare student teachers to bridge the gap between the traditional literacy and multiliteracies/multimodality has intensified in the last years. Student teachers need to acquire richer and more complex learning experiences, they need to be aware that language is not the only or, sometimes, the predominant mode of communication (Early, Kendrick & Potts, 2015). Thus, this study attempts to integrate the teaching of visual literacy within an Initial English Language Teacher Education (IELTE) programme to help expand student teachers communicative potential in the foreign language classroom. Currently, student teachers ́ literacy instruction favors the interpretation of the verbal mode; however, to promote literacy skills in this century, literacy programmes should promote the reading and the understanding of meaning making signs of both the verbal and visual mode and their relationship with the structural components of a narrative text (Painter, 2012). In the Argentinian context, there are studies that explore the teaching of visual literacy to student teachers ́ but none of the works focuses on the teaching of visual literacy within an IELTE programme. This study will explore how the explicit teaching of visual literacy can enhance student-teachers ́ communication skills in the second language. This case study involves twelve student teachers from the third year of an IELTE programme, a teacher observer and the researcher herself. To triangulate data, different data collecting tools were employed: a) pretest and posttest; b) classroom observation; c) document analysis, and d) interviews to students. The analysis of the data was of an interpretative nature supported by statistical data. Research findings, pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research are presented in the last chapters.