My last post was after my 2nd GRC (Graduate Research Conference) presentation. I made a lot of discoveries but there have been some significant shifts in my research and thinking since then. At the last GRC I presented my main on-going project, a comic series for graphic design teachers, as a method to visualise my research findings. The comic allowed me to deepen my understanding of the learning/teaching environment through reflective practice and through the relationships of my other projects. Then, I positioned my comic as the main vehicle of learning without understanding how siginificant this process was to my entire research and impetus. So…I started to ask myself why I chose comics to facilitate teaching and learning principles and what effect does this have on my entire research?
Here’s what I have been doing in the mean time.
To dig deeper into this question I went through a design process as any researcher would…right?
- I investigated the comic craft: You can’t use comics unless you attempt to learn how it works as a medium of communication. This means practicing illustrating, narrating, etc.
- An understanding of visual/graphic literacy through lit. reviews and comic design process
- The writing and design of a poster paper for Glide’08 (design education conference) Here I described the role that graphic literacy may have in facilitating teaching and learning principles to graphic design educators.
- Reflection from interviews of three design educators
- Mapping, and reflecting on my past projects and exercises in order to understand my learning.
This has led to some discoveries:
- Graphic design education may have not kept up with advances in pedagogical theory because of its past separation of practice, research and theory in its teaching/learning structure
- Has led to the consequence that teachers may find it difficult to encourage process-led enquiries and deep learning approaches in the classroom.
- Which may be attributed towards the lack of understanding and familiarity of the academic lexicon that is quite often used in pedagogical theories.
- Graphic literacy can aid in this facilitation
- Comics may act as a bridge in the awareness of pedagogical theories
That’s a lot of stuff to think about but I feel this shift, makes sense and has caused an enlightened approach to the dessiminiation and future of my research.
All this has led to a research title and question change:
FACILITATING PEDAGOGICAL AWARENESS THROUGH GRAPHIC LITERACY IN GRAPHIC DESIGN EDUCATION
How can graphic literacy help facilitate pedagogical awareness in graphic design education?
So I passed my penultimate but these are some items that the panel would like me to work on:
- Incorporate other types of graphic literacies into the comic (diagrams, maps)
- Elevating the presentation and writing to a point that it is taken seriously
- Who am I talking to? All graphic design teachers? Casual/sessional teachers? Tenure?
- Dive deeper into graphic literacy literature to provide a better foundation for my writing
- Watch my language! Rhetoric phrases, pretentious language, historical references
Next post: Reflecting on my research diagram.