Going beyond the model: Characteristics of civic visual literacy

Highlights: – Civic visual literacy is partly model generic, partly model specific, and partly content dependent – A central aspect of civic visual literacy is moving beyond the model itself – Entirety, expansion, and agency are three key aspects that students need to discern Purpose: The aim is to specify the meaning of visual literacy within the context of social science education (SSE). Design/methodology/approach: Data consist of 94 recorded small-group discussions from four learning studies in SSE aimed at qualifying students’ reasoning about societal systems and issues. Phenomenography was used to identify key aspects that students needed to discern if they were to develop qualified reading of flowcharts and scatterplots. Findings: Civic visual literacy should be understood as partly model generic, partly model specific, and partly dependent on the content visualised. Entirety, expansion, and agency are aspects that students must discern if they are to develop a more qualified civic visual literacy and thus be able to reason about societal systems and issues in a qualified way, using visual representations as a tool. Research limitations/implications: Four models were used. Future studies should investigate the extent to which the results hold in relation to different subject content and model types. Practical implications: Entirety, expansion, and agency must function as focal points in SSE teaching when visual representations are used.