Using mirrors: Visual historical literacy and students
critical thinking about political cartoons and posters
Usando espejos: Literacia visual histórica en el pensamiento
crítico de los estudiantes sobre cartoons y carteles políticos
Maria do Céu de Melo
Universidade do Minho| Portugal
Resumen:
Este texto presentará algunas reflexiones sustentadas por estudios desarrollados por nuestro grupo de
investigación sobre la importancia de la Literacia visual histórica en la Educación Histórica e en la Educación de la
Cultura Visual. Compartiremos o formato de un instrumento desenado para promover el pensamiento crítico e el
conocimiento meta cognitivo dos estudiantes sobre o seo proprio proceso de aprendizaje. Nuestra intención era que el
fose funcional en la rutina de la clase de Historia, e también como instrumento de colección de datos, particularmente
cuando nos queríamos analizar el proceso de interpretación de fontes primarias visuales como os cartoons e os carteles
políticos.
Abstract:
This text will present some reflections on the importance of visual historical literacy in History Education and
Visual Culture Education based on studies developed by our research group. We will share the format of an
instrument designed to develop students’ critical thinking and metacognition knowledge about their own learning
process. Our intention was that it could be workable in History classroom routine and as a data-gathering instrument
particularly when we intended to analyse students’ work process of interpreting primary visual sources such as cartoons
and political posters.
………………………………………………………
INTRODUCTION
This text will present some reflections on the importance of visual historical literacy both in
History Education and Visual Culture Education based on results of studies developed by our
research group1. We will share the format of an instrument designed to develop students’ critical
thinking and metacognition knowledge about their own learning process. Our intention was that it
could be workable in History classroom routine and as a data-gathering instrument particularly
when we intended to analyse students’ work process of interpreting primary visual sources such as
cartoons and political posters (Melo, 2008; 2009; 2010, on printing).
We have defined, Visual Historical Literacy as the students’ growing sophistication process of
perception and interpretation of ‘images’, using strategies of critical thinking, and supported by
metacognition knowledge. Their declarative and practice contents encompass three main
dimensions. In the first, we underline the quest for meanings according with their cultural, political,
1 Research group: Literacies -Practices and Discourses on educational contexts (Cord. Lourdes Dionísio) Studies on
Discourses and practices in the construction of historical (visual) literacy (Cord. Maria do Céu de Melo), Centre of Research in
Education, university of Minho, Portugal.
Comunicaciones— III CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL DE EDUCACIÓN ARTÍSTICA Y VISUAL
economic, and religious context being aware of artists’ internationalities, or the public dissemination
supported by specific historical institutions /actors, and its implications on narratives the images
express or the audience interpret. In the second, we focus the impact of reader’ own feelings,
emotions, values, believes and intentions when they read and interpret the images. In the third, we
include the study of formal artistic elements or strategies the artist uses to communicate or
persuade the audience /readers.
Visual historical literacy might perform different roles in History Education and on Visual
Culture education. The first, the engagement is characterized by the relevance of the specificity of
aesthetic appreciation. As frequently absent from the classrooms, it brings the ‘unexpected’ to daily
routine promoting a space-time for students’ authorship, where teacher’s control and students’ selfcensorship diminish. Ultimately, its presence might breed a powerful public expression (sometimes
a ‘riot’) of students’ voices since they are not be entirely constrained by the prescriptive and
reproductive scholar discourse. A second role focuses on its contribution for the development of
historical empathy since compels the understanding of the artists and works within their specific
historical context (Melo, 2008). Moreover, to work visual historical literacy brings to History
education and Visual Culture education the persona dimension contrary to an approach exclusively
centred into anonymous social and economical institutions. A third role underlines the need of
students become aware of the existence of multi-perspectives and the provisional nature of the narratives
(knowledge), either from the people of the ‘past’ (even close) and from contemporaries (Us
/Students).
Underlying these statements, there is an epistemological standpoint we support: To
understand the past and the present is always an act differently constructed, by historic agents,
historians, teachers, and students varying according to their historical contexts of living, production,
and reception. Many studies confirmed that students, our privileged public, are able to question
historical sources including in this large concept all ‘texts’ people produce in specific times and
contexts (Levstik, 2000; Stearns, Seixas & Wineburg, 2000; VanSledright, 2002; Werner, 2004; Virta,
A. Et al., 2004; Melo, 2009).
Finally, and particularly to what cartoons and political posters are concerned, we believe that
visual historical literacy might help students to develop critical, sustainable, active standpoints as
consumers and social actors, either reacting, contesting and breaking the acts, options and
discourses historically determined by dominant culture that tends to adopt increasingly a monody.
MIRRORS: CRITICAL THINKING AND METACOGNITION KNOWLEDGE
We see Visual Historical Literacy as a continuous and long-term learning process and that
the critical thinking is an essential reasoning tool. Therefore, the development of metacognition
knowledge is the main condition for their significant increasingly sophistication. We have adopted
the following definition: Metacognition is a persons’ declarative knowledge about all the
interactions existed between one specific object /task and the features of the strategies it demands
to understand or perform. It is possible to identify two different and mutually implicated contents.
The first, the procedural knowledge, includes the actions (steps, choices, and dilemmas) and the
mastery of communicative literacies skills. The second, the substantive knowledge of the subject
(History), deals with the historical epistemology configurations and its plural narratives provided by
historical sources, historiographies, teachers, students, textbooks and other powerful sources such
as the Media, the cultural matrix...
Therefore, when we study how students and teachers are involved in processes of
understanding History, metacognition instruments can provide relevant insights to understand both
quoted above dimensions. In a circular process of implication, this type of instrument is also a
guide for teachers’ didactic decisions and a source of information on students’ in factum
understanding frequently demanding a posteriori changes on their discourses and practices.
Many studies confirm that students have an active and relevant voice about their own
learning process. However, teachers continue to think students are not able to do so, or worse, they
do not recognize that metacognition knowledge is ‘another’ they should (and ought to) teach. This
assumption is supported by the prevalence teacher’s transmissive role and their recognition as the
only authority voice, ensuring their power and control towards teaching methodological choices
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and students’ learning assessment. We can also add the fact that most of the textbooks do not
present materials that may promote students’ metacognition awareness.
At the beginning of our research, the instrument adopted an open format being close to
journal writing. When we have tested it in actual contexts, the routine of classrooms, we
recognized that they demanded a lagging time. Students tended to write descriptive narrative
confining to refer “what, whom, where, when and how” the activity was developed with few
statements pointing out their understanding of which were its purposes, the problems they have
faced and the strategies they might have followed to solve them. Our second option was to
videotape some lectures. This procedure was also unworkable for teaching purposes, in spite of
being a relevant data-gathering tool for a research. We have also faced some restrictions both legal
and personal constraints to implement this procedure with a systematic frequency. Finally, we have
decided for a questionnaire, “The mirror” of our title, organized into four dimensions each one with
several items, allowing students to greater breadth of selection (more than one). According with the
specificity of the performed task /historical source, we proposed at the end of each dimension an
open question /item in order the respondent could express or expand their ideas, and or as well the
dimensions that could be more developed and /or different in a future experience.
The four dimensions we mainly considered are:
a)
The awareness of task purposes: Students select teacher’s didactic intentions concerning the
development of specific historical skills (nature of the task and corresponding questions)
according with the historical source that have been explored;
b)
The awareness of problems faced along the development of the task: The questionnaire
present probable problems according with the nature of the source /task and students will
select the most (one or two) problematic,
The strategies or persons that might have helped them to overcome the problems
c)
(colleagues, teacher, books…) and the response they have received, or if they have solved
them autonomously,
d)
Students are also asked to assess their commitment on the resolution of the task, and the
attribution of its relevance on historical topic understanding and to express the need or desire
to repeat it and why (open answer). Recently, we have also considered another item where
they have to name the successes they have reached.
So far, this type of instrument was only implemented in a systematic way (a whole school
year) in classes focusing cartoons2 covering subjects from History program (20th century), and a
specific research on Nazi propaganda posters34. Since last year, and still ongoing, (Melo, 2010) we
have began to implement studies focusing the same type of visual sources, but where we will
analyse the teachers and students’ interactions (interrogative, argumentative, and explanatory
discourses) along the reading and interpretation processes.
THE STUDY OF POLITICAL CARTOONS AND POSTERS
When promoting the study of political cartoons and posters, we privileged simultaneously
dimensions that define the historical enquiry procedure, and others commonly attributing to visual
enquiry (art history, media and /or political studies). We have to notice that some are referred as
graphic and artistic tools or strategies of persuasion. The items for each dimension will be
presented together in spite of some are more differently relevant and frequent in both visual
sources.
The first, Heuristics, embraces procedures where students look for information that may
reveal author’s characterization, intentions (spontaneous or if it was an order of a political or social
2 Action -research project developed by teachers in training service year along a whole school year with students of 9th
grade. Historical subjects: XX century Portuguese and European History: since Russian Revolution until our Carnation
Revolution (change from a dictatorship to a democracy, 1974)
3 Dissertation title: “Posters as a propaganda weapon: 9th grade students’ visual historical literacy” (2009), Angelina
Cunha, University of Minho.
4 We have also implemented some case studies where we studied the students’ interpretation process of movies, poetry,
comic strip, paintings, and novels.
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Comunicaciones— III CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL DE EDUCACIÓN ARTÍSTICA Y VISUAL
institution) and intended audience. Concerning the large domain of Historical Contextualization, we
subdivided the enquiry in three sections. The dating asks students to look for explicit and implicit
elements to identify the period, the specific theme, or event. Closely related with the previous, and
considering the historical nature of this dimension, we also ask students to search for explicit and
implicit elements to identify their causes or consequences. Students are motivated to discover clues
to ‘guess’ personal people’s feelings, values. Finally, we support the heuristics corroboration that
demands the reading and analysis of other types of documents [teacher’ tasks] that may confirm or
invalidate the text that the cartoon and the poster express, or giving other points of view.
The second domain focuses the verbal elements since we consider them as an important source of
information to read political cartoons and posters critically. The use of adjectives (comparatives and
superlative) plays an important role to vivify certain argument or to bring forth emotions, namely in
propaganda posters. The same situation may be noticed when the authors use imperative sentences
to mobilize the reader to action and to join or adhere to a specific idea or ideology (Allies’
propaganda to mobilize people for war efforts). Another strategy is the use of pronouns such You,
Us, or the possessive ‘Your’ or ‘Our’, that intends to wrap the message with a friendly tone, or
giving the impression of an existing personal relationship with the reader, making him /her to
believe that he /she belongs a special our particular group (Nazi propaganda).
In what the graphic elements of the cartoons and posters are concerned, the third domain, we
call students’ attention to headlines, sub-headings and fonts whereas these elements are used to call
for attention to specific information or to establish a hierarchy of relevance (visual impact or
clarity). Students are compelled to value the colours, since they are cultural related to certain
political regime (red), countries, feelings (black) (symbols). Therefore, their use may perform an
intentional political, social or psychological function, or merely to call for attention to a specific
information and establish a hierarchy of relevance (visual impact or clarity).
Finally, we attribute a great importance to some visual strategies that configures the major part
of the declarative knowledge political cartoons and posters providing interpretative challenges to
students’ critical thinking.
The presence of symbols and metaphors is one of the characteristics of this works. They are
substantiated by the use of images, (objects, animals...) to portray a person, profession, regime,
country, values, etc. They are grounded on a shared cultural frame of references in order to be
understood (as the colours). Sometimes, the use of abbreviations may adopt the function of a
symbol.
Another frequent strategy is the exaggeration /distortion that convoke different techniques or
focus decisions. The most acknowledgeable evidences are the changes in size and shape of certain
features of persons or objects, (reinforcing the symbols and metaphors) to support author’s point
of view. The features frequently exaggerated, are the faces or clothing. It may possible to include in
this type of strategy the use of stereotypes about races, social classes, professions, etc. They mainly
present insulting or pejorative images denouncing cultural generalizations tacitly accepted, even
when they are labelled as politically unbearable. Sometimes, when focusing a person or social,
political, economical institutions, the exaggeration intends to underline their ‘voices’ to persuade
the readers that they are ‘authorities’ to be accepted without questioning (ex: use of background
/foreground). Finally, this strategy is frequently used to provoke fear, rage, joy, etc. in order to
‘wrap’ or manipulate readers’ basic emotions, feelings and ideas.
The analogy is a strategy that establish relations or similar features within situations /persons
with different nature (time or context), or between complex /unknown and familiar situations. The
purpose is confronting the readers with other unexpected point of view (See Annex) to provoke a
strong impact in their self-verifying beliefs.
Finally, the irony that is explicit by the use of images and words that intends to say the
opposite or playing with the multiple meanings. The purpose is to underline or create humour
effects or to emphasize an implied meaning under the surface. This strategy reveals the ‘voice’ of
the artist.
All these dimensions are present on the classes activities we have observed, and on the
metacognitive instrument, we referred on the previous section.
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SOME PROVISIONAL CONCLUSIONS
In these final words, we will share some conclusions we achieve concerning the critical
thinking, the metacognition knowledge, and the problems students have shown when reading and
interpreting political cartoons and posters:
Students show a truthful commitment to reflect about their own learning process, enjoying
discussing orally the results of monthly balance denouncing their attribution of relevance to
metacognition procedural routine, its impact in the development of their visual historical
literacy since they noticed that some difficulties disappear, while the number of successes
increases.
When they interpret in-group cartoons and posters, students recognize that their answers are
more detailed and deeper when they are able to negotiate and confront ideas of each other
calmly. In fact, transcriptions of students’ interactions denounce that (at the beginning of the
studies) many sequences of moves are redundant, fragmentary, loosing previous speaker’s
contributions, and where the flow of reasoning is continuously lost. When they reach a
certain degree of mastery, some students also say that they would like to perform alone this
task to check their personal knowledge and autonomy.
When they do not have sufficient historical, visual, and artistic knowledge, students tend to
convoke their tacit knowledge to interpret these sources. Nevertheless, it might be said that
in these situations, students’ arguments are not exclusively a sum of emotions, feelings and
dichotomous linear judgments, but they also show evidences of analytical and interpretative
procedures. Concerning cartoons or posters that focus contemporary subjects that are
exhaustively discussed in the Media and not studied in the classrooms, students try to
discriminate and evoke useful information from different sources to overcome the
interpretative challenge they present (See Annex).
Students understand successfully some graphic techniques and strategies, but their
interpretations are deeper when supported by written confirmatory or explicative verbal
written texts (primary sources or historians’ texts).
Teachers recognize the impact of students’ reflections upon changes on their own didactic
decisions and performance. Nevertheless, they still feel and value the pressure of the
evaluation devices and school culture (tests, exams, colleagues, parents), leading them to
adopt sporadically this deepen analysis of visual historical sources.
Our research group recognize that visual literacy is constructed with the contributions of
several disciplines of the curricula. However, we believe that History classes offer a wide, critical,
interpretative, and contextualized approach that makes us walking through the looking mirror and
because it give “bones, flesh and blood” to images.
ANNEX
Pat Oliphant cartoon, 24th March, 2009, Newspapers U.S.A
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In the beginning of this school year (2009/10) we have implemented a small exploratory
study in a secondary education class (sample of 10 students) (12th year /last year of Portuguese
Educational system before University entry). Our purpose was to see if students would be able to
convoke their prior historical knowledge (9th year, when they study the II World War) to interpret a
cartoon that focus a nowadays issue. During that year, they did not have studied how Israel was
founded. We have asked them to write freely about what they see in this cartoon. We will quote
two different answers without linguist correction and through a literal translation:
«We do not study the problems of today. Unfortunately, because I think History learning is useful to open
our eyes. But I see the News, so I understood many things. I understood that the artist is critic to the action of Israel
government, because they do not respect the right of Palestinians to have a homeland. And they are poor and few, and
they do not have powerful friends. I think that Israelites have a short memory, because they have suffered a lot with
the Nazis and they are doing more or less the same. The soldier remembers the way Nazi army walked, the boots
and the arm standing up. I found very ironic the use of David star transformed in a tank masked in a shark. I did
not understand the sword, because it looks like a sword from ancient times and why the soldier has no head. One
more thing, I would like to know if the young’s like me agree with their government» (Louis, 16 years old)
«I think that this cartoon is very strong and it was a humiliation for the Israelite persons to see themselves
portrayed that way. I would, because I feel sadness when I see documentaries about what we have done in Angola.
Since the end of our dictatorship, they are an independent country. I do not know anything about the author, but I
am sure that he is very courageous, because there are many rich Jews. But at U.S.A. there is no censorship, so Pat’s
cartoon was published. We have to accept different point of views. This cartoon is full of things we have studied about
the Nazis that have persecuted the Jews. Now, they are doing the same with people from Gaza. I show this cartoon to
my father and he said: They should be ashamed. And I agree with him» (Catharina, 15 years old)
REFERENCES
MELO, Maria do Céu & LOPES, José Manuel (eds.) (2004): Historical and fictional narratives:
reception and production by teachers and students, Braga, Centro de Estudos em Educação e
Psicologia, Universidade do Minho.*
MELO, Maria do Céu (Org.) (2008): Images in History classroom: dialogues and silences,.
Mangualde, Edições Pedago.*
MELO, Maria do Céu & SIMAN, Lana (orgs.) (2010): Teachers and students’ discourses in History
classrooms. Studies in Portugal and Brazil (on printing).*
MELO, Maria do Céu (org.) (2009): Tacit Historical knowledge: Polyphonies of students and
teachers, Braga, Centro de Investigação em Educação, Universidade do Minho*.
STEARNS, P, Seixas, P & Wineburg, S. (eds.) (2000): Knowing, Teaching & Learning History.
National and International Perspectives, New York, New York University Press.
VANSLEDRIGHT, B. (2002): In Search of America’s Past, New York, Teachers College Press.
WERNER, W. (2004): On Political Cartoons and Social Studies Textbooks: Visual Analogies,
Intertextuality, and Cultural Memory, Canadian Social Studies, Vol. 38/2, Winter, pp. 81-98.
VIRTA, A. et alii (2004): What can be found in historical cartoons? A pilot study on upper school
students’ and students teachers’ interpretations” in MERENLUOTO, K. & MIKKILÄERDMANN, M. (Eds), Learning research challenges in the domain specific approaches in
Teaching, A symposium for research on teaching and learning, Turku, Department of Teacher
Education, University of Turku.
* Portuguese/titles in English
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