A presentation of Walter Werner's 2002 article titled Reading Visual Texts published in Theory and Research in Social Education

1. Reading Visual Text
A review of Walter Werner’s 2002
article in Theory and Research in
Social Education

2. Call to use students’ agency to enhance
visual reading
Active and critical capacities to understand and
know
Framed by the
Birmingham tradition of
Cultural Studies
Movement
rooted in Marxist
thought and
informed by the
work of Antonio
Gramsci
Cultural hegemony

3. What does this image tell us
about Lincoln the
Emancipator?
"The Coming Man's Presidential
Career, à la Blondin" by Jacob
Dallas. Harper's Weekly, Aug 25,
1860, p. 544
Peter Seixas’ call
for centering
social education
around cultural
studies

4. Three conditions for reading visual
texts
Authority
Opportunity and Capacity
Community for Engaging

5. Authority
“If students are to engage in multiple readings
of an image, they need to be positioned as
interpreters”

6. Open? Closed?
Figure 1:
“The Industrial Revolution.” Source:
William McNeill, The Rise of the West: A
History of the Human
Community (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1963), 743. © by the
University of Chicago. All rights
reserved.
http://www.bu.edu/historic/staley.html

7. Opportunity and Capacity
“Multiple readings of images disturb taken-for-
granted assumptions underlying “reading”
itself (‘Why are different readings possible?’),
and focus on the interplay between text and
reader.”

8. Ways to Reading Visual Texts
Instrumental
Narrative
Iconic
Editorial
Indicative
Oppositional
Reflexive
text as
Resource
Storyline
Icon
Editorial
Index
Positioning
Mirror

9. Werner, 2002, p. 408

10. Figure 3:
“Hammurabi’s Great Society.” Source: Source:
William McNeill, The Rise of the West: A History
of the Human Community (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1963), 57. © by the University
of Chicago. All rights reserved.
http://www.bu.edu/historic/staley.html
Instrumental
Narrative
Iconic
Editorial
Indicative
Oppositional
Reflexive

11. Community
• “Multiple readings of images require a
supportive classroom discourse (i.e., norms,
beliefs, practices, and exemplars) that
encourages student authority in reading, and
provides ongoing opportunity to engage with
multiple readings.”