Improving Visual Literacy Skills: Reading Between the Lines, Bars, Dots, and Images

Learning how to interpret visual images in science classes can be overwhelming for some students. However, reading and interpreting diagrams, graphs, photographs, maps, and laboratory set-ups is an essential disciplinary competency. Here, we present a 4-step heuristic (or short-cut) to help students make sense of images by asking what type of image they see, how do they know what it means, why is it important, and what do they still wonder after examining the image. The Visual Literacy Heuristic can also help teachers initiate class discussions by focusing on symbols used in images (e.g., legends, colors, icons, shapes) and how figure captions are helpful. Discussions can also uncover students’ prior knowledge, assumptions, and biases about the images.