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The Roles of Photography for Developing Literacy Across the Disciplines
Author(s) -
Cappello Marva,
Lafferty Karen E.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the reading teacher
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.642
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1936-2714
pISSN - 0034-0561
DOI - 10.1002/trtr.1418
Subject(s) - photography , visual literacy , discipline , literacy , vocabulary , reading (process) , psychology , metacognition , mathematics education , pedagogy , vocabulary development , teaching method , visual arts , sociology , linguistics , art , social science , philosophy , cognition , neuroscience
Teachers can capitalize on the overwhelmingly visual nature of contemporary society for learning and teaching through integrating photography in their classroom instruction. In offering an alternative pathway for acquiring and expressing knowledge, photography has the potential to strengthen instruction across disciplines by drawing on multiple literacies. Indeed, photography can magnify and transform how students learn. This article explores the roles photography played in one fourth grade science classroom where teachers used Visual Thinking Strategies to promote close reading of visual texts and students created photo‐booklets to demonstrate disciplinary literacy in geology as well as reflect on their acquisition of content knowledge through photo‐interviews. In de‐scribing an instructional sequence of visual‐based activities and multi‐modal projects, this article illustrates photography's potential to improve disciplinary literacy teaching and learning by facilitating metacognition, academic vocabulary, and risk taking.