Lesson plans for a slow approach to visual literacy

CHICAGO — The principles of “slow librarianship”—which prioritizes reflection, collaboration, solidarity, and valuing all kinds of contributions—can also support deeper and more sustained learning and understanding. “A Slow Approach to Visual Literacy in Higher Education: Lesson Plans for Critical Discernment,” published by ALA Neal-Schuman, emphasizes the importance of attention and focus to the process of visual literacy. Authors Dana Statton Thompson and Stephanie Beene also demonstrate how this approach supports ACRL’s Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education and the Framework for Visual Literacy in Higher Education. Library workers, educators, and instructors will discover:

• dozens of flexible lesson plans for teaching visual literacy, scaffolded by competency levels: novice, intermediate, and advanced;
• ways to integrate slow looking into the classroom, emphasizing careful observation and the sustained act of looking;
• techniques for showing learners how to select images with intention, as well as carefully determine when and how to share those images;
• reasons why slow creating is essential to understanding and applying visual literacy in the twenty-first century; and
• a look at how increasing access to internet connectivity, generative artificial intelligence (AI), and new ethics for sharing and using information online will affect the future of visual literacy.

Examination copies are available for instructors who are interested in adopting this title for course use.

Thompson is a Research and Instruction Librarian at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky and Assistant Dean of Libraries. She is an Institute for Research Design in Librarianship scholar and served as a member of the ACRL Visual Literacy Task Force. She is active in the International Visual Literacy Association and the Art Libraries Society of North America. Beene is the Art, Architecture, and Planning Librarian at the University of New Mexico (UNM) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She served as a member of the ACRL Visual Literacy Task Force and is active in the Art Libraries Society of North America, the Association of Architecture School Libraries, and the International Visual Literacy Association.

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