Reproduction of Image Through Critical Visual Reading in In-Service Teacher Training

Abstract

This research is a case study analyzing the process of Intersemiotic Exchange activity carried out as part of an in-service training offered through a TUBITAK supported project to help teachers deliver critical and cultural inquiries in their classrooms through visual culture images. In the Intersemiotic Exchange activity, the teachers were expected to establish a connection between a piece of artwork and an advertisement image, to evaluate the newly acquired meaning of the borrowed image in the new context and to reproduce it in a context of social content. As a first step, the teachers analyzed the artwork and the relevant advertisement image they had selected for their similarity and differences in form, they then read those images for their similarities and differences in meaning. As the final stage of the activity, they reproduced the artwork in the context of a social problem they have determined. The teachers here were expected to carry out a deliberate and purposeful intertextuality study. In this research we have carried out in seven cities with a total of 508 classroom and visual arts teachers, the analysis unit is the experience of participant teachers relevant to the applied program. At the end of the process, a significant improvement was observed in teachers' ability to inquire with respect to interpretation of visual messages and similar message formation through visual literacy. The teachers evaluated that the program could help students to increase relational thinking skills and awareness of social problems. Additionally, they self-criticized their use of cognitive and interactive teaching approaches in the classroom and noted that they had been able to develop ideas to improve their own art lesson activities in the framework of the experiences they had achieved in the process of the activity. In this context, it is possible to say that it is necessary to further improvement of the teachers' competencies through different in-service training activities to help them interpret visual culture pedagogy related approaches in their classrooms.