Visual Literacy in the Context of Digital Education Transformation

Abstract

The evolution of digital technologies and the use of visual media in our everyday life highlights the necessity to educate visually literate individuals. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2018) has launched the Future of Education and Skills 2030 that emphasizes that due to the digitalization into all areas of life, digital and data literacy are considered to be core foundations and being literate in this context requires the ability to comprehend, interpret, use and create textual and visual information in various formats, contexts and for diverse purposes (making meaning based on encoding and decoding signs/sign systems). The concept of visual literacy has been studied for several decades, however, it is a relatively new study area within a digital environment in Latvian media and education context. By bringing attention to the practice and reporting students comprehension and competency within the domain of digital visual literacy, the author reports the findings of a study that examined the competence of the sub-domain of visual literacy, applying Inquiry Graphic (IG) as a framework for the analysis. The purpose of this paper is to contribute quantitative and qualitative data to the domain of visual literacy amongst the Riga Art and Media school final year students and conceptualize visual literacy in the process of digital education transformation, proposing further research on academic practice and pedagogical tools to improve a person’s visual literacy and visual media competence in a digital environment.