From teaching middle school English, to undergraduate composition, to graduate research writing courses in education, I have enjoyed designing and implementing strategies to fit these different contexts. One such example is using images to stimulate students’ thinking about writing, and it has led to some of my own compositions.
When I initially began using this approach, I was teaching middle school English. In order to help my students review material from our class, as well reaching into writing styles like comedy and mystery, I used Google Images as creatively as possible, searching for combinations of key terms. What I found were scores of images that I could flash on our classroom screen, asking students to weave stories around these strange pictures. In some cases, students could write about one particular image, and in other cases I would ask them to try to combine what they saw in a cohesive way.
When I made the migration to teaching college courses, I found that using image-based text was again a go-to strategy. When it came to analysis writing, my belief that a variety of texts could illicit complex responses made its way into my pedagogy. Whether we were watching silent film clips and talking about the decisions directors made, examining the contents of Jon Klassen children’s books with attention to the way he uses changes in illustrations, or considering the way words paint pictures in poetry by Billy Collins, images again provided joy and creativity, even with an older audience. This varied use of what “text” means helps students think through the kinds of work that they will produce in their majors, and in some cases helps them think about their academic direction.
When it comes to graduate-level writing, I have found the freedom and beauty of integrating research and art. This is a topic I continue to explore, and I have just had the opportunity to reach into arts-based work in my dissertation. What began as a numbers-based understanding of research analysis and processes years ago has grown into a full appreciation of and practice with visuals and words when writing research from a qualitative standpoint.
More than using these approaches in my analysis, weaving words in poetic and pictorial form, I have also asked students in graduate-level courses to consider visual representations of their proposed studies. When we talk about qualitative study, this is one of the first tasks we practice. Even if my students’ approach to their work is not qualitative or arts-based, simply asking them to engage is worth a few minutes of class time as paradigms are reconsidered and questions rethought.
Someone wise once said that thinking about writing is writing. I believe that with the right set of images, or with some analytical and visual approaches to composing, students can begin to meld words to interesting new concepts and may even arrive at a new draft in the process.
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Jason D. DeHart is an assistant professor of reading education at Appalachian State University. He completed his Ph.D. at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and taught middle school English for eight years.