The search for visual literacy: Towards a post-Literacy approach

The central argument of this thesis is that established understandings of visual literacy have proved to be inadequate to contemporary education systems in the context of a postmodern world where there is a saturation of media and visual images. The inadequacies of established understandings of visual literacy centre on the focus of education on print rather than on spatial understandings of the moving visual image. It is also argued in this thesis that today's children interpret, interact with, and experience the visual world in ways significantly different from previous generations.

This thesis uses the theorist Baudrillard's concepts of simulacra, hyperreality and implosion, and seduction to re-conceptualise visual literacy within what I have termed a post -Literacy framework and works to construct a generational approach to the analysis of electronic media, in particular television. I critique the following curriculum documents at the centre of current visual literacy education in Queensland, Australia: Using visual texts in primary and secondary English classrooms (Department of Education Queensland, 1993); Media curriculum guide for Years 1 to 10: Constructing realities (Department of Education Queensland, 1994); and The arts: Years 1 to 10 syllabus (Queensland School Curriculum Council, 2001). The two research questions therefore focus on the following:

To what extent do the three selected curriculum documents contain incidences of postmodern understandings identified in Baudrillard's concepts which I construct as three themes of analysis?

How are the understandings of the new generation's worldviews, including their disengaging of reality and their engagement with media, dealt within the three selected curriculum documents under analysis?

The move to post -Literate understandings is linked to a reconceptualising of generation, culture, knowledge and power within formal educational contexts. The major finding of this thesis leads to a more complex understanding of visual literacy within and outside formal educational contexts.