Visual Literacy and Reflective Visual Journals

Abstract

This paper explores the contribution of reflective visual journals to our understanding of visual literacy. The discussion is based on a phenomenographic analysis of 232 reflective visual journal entries and a thematic analysis of nine interviews with student participants in an undergraduate visual culture class. Reflective visual journals require students to reflect on, analyze, and produce their own images in response to their learning about visual culture. The paper calls for a systematic study of visual reflection as a visual literacy experience. It discusses “concept re-enactment,” a visual reflective practice that results in the performance of a concept or an argument. This practice complicates our assessment of visual literacy skills as concept re-enactment is not fully captured by students’ visual production. This study, therefore, argues that concept re-enactment reveals visual literacy as a multidimensional experience involving practices that are neither fully “visual” nor captured by the notion of visual competence.