Articulating Teaching Writing in a Visual World

The visual plays a central role in today's multimediated, computerized culture. The question is: How can we exploit the intersections between the visual and the verbal to improve learning? ARTiculating explores ways to capitalize on visually connected pedagogy.

While the chapters point to a small part of the ever-increasing, multidisciplinary literature now available in the visual literacy area, in general the authors present actual practices in language and visual learning since these inspire further research specific to our practices and disciplines. To emphasize the need to examine our disciplinary objectives, the activities also demonstrate how to adapt language and visual arts pedagogy across disciplines and how much we can learn from the practices of other disciplines.

The activities featured in the book help teachers lead students to the sources (metaphors, mental images, problem-solving algorithms, culturally coded responses) from which their writing and language abilities originate. Doing so offers teachers and students opportunities for powerful learning experiences. While the visual activities meet student-specific objectives, the chapters also provide teachers at many educational levels and across the curriculum with strategies that employ visual-based pedagogy as a web that connects classroom learning objectives with larger curricular learning objectives.

PAMELA B. CHILDERS, Caldwell Chair of Composition at the McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, directs the writing center and the writing-across-the-curriculum program. A former public school English teacher, Dr. Childers has published numerous articles and chapters, and coedited Programs and Practices: Writing Across the Secondary School Curriculum (Boynton/Cook, 1194, with Anne Ruggles Gere and Art Young). She also is past president of the National Writing Centers Association.