“Drawing” as a key skill for visual literacy in life-long and life-wide learning

Visual literacy is both the capacity to interpret and create images. In several schoolcurricula visual literacy is not supported or integrated in the different stages of life-long learning.We introduce “drawings”, with the aim of presenting and discussing their possible contribution(or abuse) to a competency-based approach, related to the hidden aspects experienced in thelearning/teaching process and to the necessity of taking into consideration the entire person wholives and learns in different lifelong and lifewide settings. In addition we discuss, through CLIL(Content and Language Integrated Learning) methodology, how drawings can contribute, as apart of visual literacy, to competencies development from childhood to adult education.Drawings were first means of communicating and writing human experience. In the first stagesof learning drawing-to-learn is associated to writing-to-learn, and children experience this communicationtool for expressing and creating knowledge. During the following stages, drawingbecomes a sort of personal talent, associated to artistic skills in the educational curricula.In the last decades qualitative research and adult learning activities have explored and revealedopportunities of drawings, above all as reflective tools and active methods for expressing latentaspects of reality and to enhance life skills. Drawings can function and serve as stimuli that createa balance between cognition and embodied cognition. However, in the last three years some authorshave highlighted a new approach emphasizing their contribution as a part of visual literacy,which could support different learning outcomes both in the scientific field and in humanities.Our call is both for a drawing practice integrated in all the learning pathways, and according toMassa’s writings, for a reflective practice through the experience o

L’espressione visual literacy si riferisce sia alla capacità di interpretare le immagini,sia a quella di crearle. In molti curricoli scolastici la visual literacy non risulta pienamente integratanei diversi stadi.In questo contributo introduciamo il lavoro con i “disegni” con l’obiettivo di presentare e discutereil loro possibile contributo (o abuso) al processo di apprendimento/insegnamento nell’otticadi un approccio “competency-based”, in relazione agli aspetti del curricolo nascosto e in riferimentoad un approccio olistico in formazione nei vari contesti formali/non formali/informali, inun prospettiva life-long e life-wide. Inoltre, un nuovo approccio che mira a mettere in luce il ruolodella visual literacy ai fini del miglioramento dei risultati di apprendimento offrirà un caso concretoin cui discutere un ripensamento del ruolo del “disegnare” nell’intero curricolo. Nel contributoinfatti, verrà descritto un ambito didattico in cui il disegno rappresenta una strategia trasversaledi supporto (scaffolding) all’apprendimento: la metodologia CLIL (Content and LanguageIntegrated Learning).